Todd Gutmann: Mr. Sousa

One of the easiest ways to show respect for someone else is to respect their name. Todd Gutmann tells us about the teacher who taught him that.

Every kid at my junior high knew Mr. Sousa’s math and science classes were the hardest in the school, and Mr. Sousa himself..,kids joked about him. He was stiff and formal. He called us by our last names. Not the way a more popular teacher did: “Tucker, come up here for a minute.” Mr. Sousa called everyone Mr. and Ms.

The first day, I corrected every teacher about my name. They’d call, “Todd Gootman?” I’d say “It’s Gutmann.” They’d nod and go to the next name. Not Mr. Sousa.

“Mr. Goot-mann?”

“It’s Gutmann.”

He looked down at his roll sheet. “It says here Goot-mann.”

“It’s Gutmann.” Already there were suppressed titters. And that was before he called me up to his desk.

“Your name is German, is it not?”

I said that it was.

“Then it’s pronounced Goot-mann.”

“We pronounce it Gutmann.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Very well, Mr. Gutmann, you may return to your seat.”

The thing is: the more popular teacher kept calling me Gootman. Mr. Sousa never mispronounced my name again.

I didn’t join the other students in ridiculing Mr. Sousa behind his back, but I also never defended him, and I regret that now. There was a reason his classes were so hard and that we learned so much from them, and it was the same reason he called us by our last names. Mr. Sousa respected us. Even that odd first-day argument, I think, was about helping me respect my heritage, which, is a way of respecting myself.

Mr. Sousa, if you can hear this, thank you.

With a Perspective, I’m Todd Gutmann.

Todd Gutmann writes plays and other things, usually using his middle name, Max.